White House May Step In for Cybersecurity

By Jane McEntegart
published

Experts are today calling for the Whitehouse to take control of cybersecurity, a responsibility that currently falls under the Department of Homeland Security’s scope of duty.

Today a report in the New York Times cites Melissa Hathaway, acting senior director for cyberspace appointed by President Obama, as saying the White House needed to step in and take control of the nation’s cybersecurity policy.

Hathaway was given responsibility for a 60-day review of the issues surrounding cyberspace threats. Yesterday, the federal official said the issue “required leading from the top,” starting from the White House and running right down through, “departments and agencies, state, local, tribal governments, the C-Suite, and to the local classroom and library.”

Yesterday, National Security Agency Director and three-star army general Keith Alexander called for a "team" approach to cybersecurity that would see the NSA take care of protecting military and intelligence networks while the Department of Homeland Security protected government networks.

All of this follows an alleged breach of Pentagon security which apparently saw terabytes of data stolen from the $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project. While initial reports say hackers accessed the information by exploiting a vulnerabilities in the networks of two or three contractors helping with the development of the program, contractors say reports are incorrect. The WSJ yesterday reported that Lockheed Martin Corp., the lead contractor involved in the program, said Tuesday that it believed the publications report was "incorrect in its representation of successful cyber attacks."

"To our knowledge, there has never been any classified information breach," the statement said. The WSJ countered this with the fact that at no point did they report that the stolen information was classified.

Jane McEntegart
15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Welcome to the New World Order.

    Keep buying into the governments lies to gain control.

    2009 = 1984
    Reply
  • AdamB5000
    Why don't they just worry about keeping their stuff safe and let me worry about keeping my stuff safe? Why do they need to "take control?"

    Well, that's a rhetorical question. We all know our beloved government seems to want to control everything. Their faux pas of lack of security is just an excuse to overstep their boundries of internet regulation. Yay.

    Amendment 28: What you can and cannot say/do on the internet.

    You worry about yourself. I'll worry about myself. We have plenty of private security/firewall/anti-virus companies that offer their services to keep me safe. They're much more efficient at it than you, the government, will ever be.

    Maybe I'm over reacting, but when I hear the government say they need to step in on the internet, nothing good will come of it.
    Reply
  • Tindytim
    That what you get when you have a more extreme Democrat in office. They want to provide for everyone, even if they don't need to be provided for, and even if there are more efficient manners to do so.
    Reply
  • Parrdacc
    No surprise here. Now for your daily conspiracy theory report:

    Noticed how all of sudden for about the last, oh we'll say month or so, a lot of news and stories about "hackers" and/or cyberspies doing this and that. Now we those morons in Washington calling for more government intervention i.e. money. Seems like someone wants a nice chunk of that supposed free money the government is starting to hand out.
    Reply
  • Looks like the government has been upgrading their knowledge on the internet. I miss the days when they thought it was just a series of tubes :(

    Want to prevent hackers from stealing secrets? Stop connecting the systems to the INTERNET, which was never MADE for security.
    Reply
  • jsloan
    i agree, want people not to steal your trade secrets over the internet, then dont connect them to the internet. dont let people copy them to thumb drives, dont have usb ports exposed. have them in locked them, monitored computers. have them encypted with password and hardware password key card. ect
    Reply
  • researchthis
    Isn't this the same White House that decided to keep using Blackberries against recommendations from every security expert? Yeah, I feel very safe now.

    For those saying that they shouldn't use the internet, that's what the last administration did, but OH YEAH, people thought that meant they were "out of touch" and "incompetent". *sigh*
    Reply
  • gamerjames
    It's just the democrats wanting a larger government that can "provide" for everybody, which not everybody needs...

    They need to worry about their own problems, like getting hacked and losing terabytes of data. how does that happen? ... seriously, they need to stop trying to "gain control" and they need to stop interfering with our lives IMO. LOL
    Reply
  • greliu
    Well, I think what their saying is that the White House should step in for government internet security. So really, they should just have the NSA step their game up. They won't have the White House controling domestic internet. Remember, there was an article not to long ago saying some congressmen wanted Obama to have control over content on the internet. I think he is smarter than that, if you notice, he isn't as left-side as he orginally wanted to be. To many American's would get pissed, and his program approval ratings are beginning to loss ground anyway.
    Reply
  • jecht
    ...would see the NSA take care of protecting military and intelligence networks while the Department of Homeland Security protected government networks.

    Where did they it say they were taking control of the nation's internet? This is about keeping THEIR OWN networks safe.

    The WSJ countered this with the fact that at no point did they report that the stolen information was classified.

    Um, yeah, cuz information pertaining to a government's 300 billion dollar fighter plane project wouldn't be classified.
    Reply